This Hasidic tale
concerns a man who rushes around, tending to his business, until he is interrupted.
In his unforgettable book, Antoine de Saint Exupery (1900-1944) writes about
the visit of the Little Prince to the fourth planet, which "belongs"
to a businessman. This businessman spends his entire day taking stock of his
property and is so preoccupied that when the Little Prince appears, he doesn't
even lift his head. The Little Prince hears him counting: "Then that makes
five-hundred-and-one-million, six-hundred-twenty-two-thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one
..."

"Five hundred million what?" asks the Little Prince.

"Eh? Are you
still there? Five hundred and one million, I can't stop ... I have so much to
do! I am concerned with matters of consequence. I don't amuse myself with balderdash,"
the businessman replies without looking up.

But the Little
Prince does not give up. "Five hundred-and-one million what?" he persists.

At this point,
the businessman realizes there is no hope of being left in peace until he answers
the question. It turns out he is counting the stars.

"And what
do you do with these stars?" the Little Prince asks.

"Nothing,"
says the businessman. "I own them."

"And what
good does it do you to own the stars?" the Little Prince asks in wonder.

"It does me
the good of making me rich," comes the reply.

"And what
good does it do you to be rich?" the Little Prince continues.

"It makes
it possible for me to buy more stars, if any are ever discovered," says
the businessman.

Upon further questioning,
the Little Prince discovers that the businessman "administers" these
stars and claims to "own" them by dint of the fact that nobody else
ever thought of owning them. He counts them, writes down the number of stars
on a little paper and "puts them in the bank."

But the Little
Prince does not think like adults. He explains his outlook to the businessman:
"I myself own a flower, which I water every day. I own three volcanoes,
which I clean out every week. ... It is of some use to my flower, that I own
them. But you are of no use to the stars."

Saint Exupery's
wonderful book has been endlessly written about and interpreted, but I would
like to compare it to a profound Hasidic tale of which I'm sure Saint Exupery
never heard, and point out the similarities and differences in the spiritual
world they portray. At the heart of both stories is a man who is preoccupied
with some business connected to a bank. In both, an attempt is made to shake
this man out of his profound illusions concerning ownership and the relationship
between man and money. Like the businessman who claims to be a practical person
while the child sees he is living in a dream, the Hasidic tale is about a man
rushing around, tending to his seemingly "practical" business until
the rabbi interferes. In both stories, the role of the protagonist is to "wake
up" the preoccupied person in an almost comic manner.

Empathy for simple
folk

The Hasidic tale
goes as follows: "Once Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev met a man in the
marketplace who was very preoccupied with his affairs. The man had to repay
a debt to the bank, but did not have the money. He ran here and there, trying
to obtain loans from various people. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak stopped him and asked
`Vus machst du?' (`How are you?') The man replied that he was busy and had no
time to talk. He tried to slip away but Rabbi Levi persisted. `Iber du vus machst?'
he asked again. `Iber vus machst du?' (`But what are you doing? What's up?')"

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak
of Berdichev, a legendary figure in the Hasidic movement, was born in 1740 in
Hoshakov, Galicia. He rose to fame in 1785 when he was appointed rabbi of Berdichev,
turning it over the years into the spiritual hub of Hasidism in Ukraine. Unlike
other tales, in which Rabbi Levi Yitzhak shows empathy for simple, hard-working
folks, in this one he seems to ignore the distress of the debt-ridden man. Instead
of helping him solve his financial problems, he corners him and keeps him from
focusing on what he is trying to do.

So what does Rabbi
Levi want from this man? What is he really saying when he asks "Vus machst
du?" In his adaptation of the tale, Martin Buber translates this phrase
as "what are you doing?" although in Yiddish, it means "how are
you?" I think there is a deeper meaning here. Levi Yitzhak, who knows very
well how the man is doing externally, continues to question him, trying to alert
him to the state of his inner being. By way of explanation, the narrator of
the story adds: "Because everything is God's will, as it is written, `everything
is in God's hands apart from the fear of God' - "hakol biyedei shamayim
khutz miyirat shamayim' [Talmud Bavli, Brachot 33b]. All the trials and tribulations
of earning a living are a temptation not to do one's duty, which is to be God-
fearing. Hence the rabbi asks, What is it that you do? - since fear of God is
in your hands, as opposed to all earthly affairs, which are determined by God."

The idea behind
this explanation (that Buber accepts) is that Levi Yitzhak wants to help the
man extricate himself from his troubles, but because the source of the trouble
is not the bank debt, but a spiritual debt, Yitzhak Levi badgers him in order
to awaken him to that reality. The bank debt is thus a kind of "cover-up"
for an internal debt. The man's external problems are an illusion. They are
a kind of bad dream that drags him into preoccupation with the externals of
life. He fails to realize that only by looking inward will he get to the root
of the problem.

Opening someone's
eyes through nagging questions is also typical of the Little Prince. He shows
the businessman that his egocentric preoccupation with amassing property, to
which he attributes his self-worth as a rich man, is the source of error in
the adult world. When something belongs to me, says the Little Prince, the idea
is not for the object to glorify my name, but for it to become a subject that
I "water" and care for.

Devil and divinity

The Saint Exupery
story helps to round out the Hasidic tale: Levi Yitzhak tries to rouse the man
from his nightmare of financial distress by asking him an existential question:
And what about you? Where are you in this dream that has swept you up? Only
when the "businessman" comes to terms with his fixation and realizes
that he is not amassing anything tangible, but simply becoming a slave to his
"property," can he break free and become a giver rather than a taker.

Only by being a
giver, like the Little Prince, with his concern for his flower's good, can man
become truly creative. In becoming creative, man resembles God and fulfils his
mission. This is not to say that life stops being problematic. But the troubles
that the man perceives as sent by the devil suddenly become a kind of divine
intervention that forces man to look inside himself, liberating him and giving
him the ability to make choices, exercise creativity and become a giver.

There is no "happy
end" in either story. But unlike the gentle, sensitive boy versus the close-minded
adult - and there is no question with whom the reader sides (even if we are
all "businessmen," we love to see ourselves as the little boy) - the
Hasidic tale is much more complex, not to mention disconcerting. The whole balance
is different. We feel a lot more empathy for the distraught man than for the
"nudnik" rabbi, who instead of helping, preaches to him and basically
gets in his way. Buber, finding this aspect of the story disturbing, adds a
few words to accentuate the man's total obsession with his business - transforming
it into a virtual clone of "The Little Prince."

But it is precisely
here, I think, that the great power of the Hasidic story lies. It does not pander
to the reader. It provokes us in the same way that Levi Yitzhak provokes the
man in the market. In the final analysis, however, each story teaches in its
own way that the problems we encounter in our lives are the result of complications
arising from not being sufficiently "god-fearing." We busy ourselves
with external obligations, allowing ourselves to be swept up in borrowed ideas
and social conformity, while ignoring our own inner voice.